This is a horrible proposal. Power should still cost per KWh, but that price should be the sliding scale.
If there's no economic incentive to save power, people will tend to do it less.
If there's no economic incentive to save power, people will tend to do it less.
If you want to help the poor, directly subsidize solar panels and batteries for them (thorough the state and federal gov, not the investor owned utility), or community utility scale renewables and storage where on site generation and storage is infeasible.
(Designing a 20kw ground mount expansion for a friend outside of Sacramento on SMUD to work towards going off grid if needed)
Reducing actual demand for PG&E electricity is not in the best interest of regulators, that much is clear.
Residential solar is being mandated by policy, slightly reducing the incentive to build it by shaving off a portion of the per kWh charge and replacing that portion with a connection fee wouldn’t kill it even if the mandate wasn’t there. Which, again, it is.
Is this…a thing California could even do? Is there some state-actionable version of nationalization that I’ve never heard of?
A quick search turned up this article[1] talking about an attempt to do exactly what we’re talking about here, but it was ultimately settled out of court and as far as I can tell it’s still an open question as to whether a state government can legitimately exercise eminent domain in this context.
This can't come soon in enough in CA where a huge number of people don't have the option of rooftop solar because they are apartment and condo dwellers and/or renters. Apparently a law was finally passed in 2022 to allow community solar [1], but Energy Sage community solar searches [2] turn up nothing in any of the populous zip codes I entered.
1. https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-ene...
2. https://www.energysage.com/local-data/community-solar/ca/
The Californian government is famous for all its well-run programs. "The trains are always on time in California", as they say.
> Achievement of California’s GHG reduction goals increasingly require more electricity consumption via building electrification and electric vehicle (EV) adoption. It is imperative that the Commission takes steps to reduce volumetric rates. IGFCs can reduce volumetric rates in a manner that eases affordability pressures on low-income customers and improve access to electrification, when done correctly.
from pages 4-5 of this doc: https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/energ...
It will under the proposal, though that cost is less than without it. Its splitting the rate to a fixed and variable component, not going all fixed.
> If there's no economic incentive to save power, people will tend to do it less.
Part of this is shifting incentives from non-electric-grid energy use (natural gas appliances, ICE cars) to grid electricity use (electric appliances, BEV cars).
We don't want people to save grid electricity by using more polluting energy sources, and overpricing per-kW grid use incentivizes that undesirable behavior.
I support the goal here, but I don't like the implementation. Something such as a fixed monthly cost for grid-tied systems would make much more sense.
Are we going to run out of Sun?
It seems like with the criticism of non-renewables, the current zeitgeist has convinced everyone of degrowth ideology wholesale. The debate about renewables and non-renewables is orthogonal.
Humans IMO should have an ambition to consume all the wasted energy radiating out in outerspace by the Sun and capture it for our use.
Energy conservation has religious cult-like faith-based undercurrents. Brainwashed.
No, but this is the same orgiastic mentality that prevailed when oil was cheap in the 90s. It bit us in the ass when demand increased.
Just because capacity exists doesn't mean we should maximize usage.
> consume all the wasted energy radiating out in outerspace
That's not wasted, it's just not captured. Capturing it requires strip-mining of the planet for the materials needed to build the damn panels, just so we can do dumb shit like generating fake money and running air conditioners with the windows open because it has no apparent cost to us ("free energy from the sun!").
Your logic literally drove the buffalo to near-extinction. People were killing and leaving them for dead just because they could. It's parasitic behavior.
Both of those things are still true in this proposal - it's not proposing a fixed price for electricity based on income. Electricity will still be priced per kWh (although at a slightly lower rate) over and above the flat income-based fee, and the price will continue to vary by time of day (AKA time-of-use) instead of by income.
The income-based fees will cover all the state-mandated programs run by the utilities to provide support for low-income residents, among other things. Yes, that's effectively a redistributive tax that should be done via regular state legislation and state programs to help lower income people install solar and batteries, thereby increasing their resilience and decreasing their dependency on utility rates.
But such measures are unpopular because nobody will vote for a tax raise to help poor people pay for equipment to help them save money on electricity bills. That's a privilege for the well-off. These issues are left between the conflicting interests of a shareholder owned utility and the state.